aria2/README

aria2 - The ultra fast download utility
=======================================
:Author:    Tatsuhiro Tsujikawa
:Email:     tujikawa_at_users_dot_sourceforge_dot_net

Disclaimer
----------
This program comes with no warranty.
You must use this program at your own risk.

Introduction
------------
aria2 is a utility for downloading files. The supported protocols are HTTP(S),
FTP, BitTorrent, and Metalink.
It can download a file from multiple sources/protocols and tries to utilize
your maximum download bandwidth.
It supports downloading a file from HTTP(S)/FTP and BitTorrent at the same time,
while the data downloaded from HTTP(S)/FTP is uploaded to the BitTorrent swarm.
Using Metalink's chunk checksums, aria2 automatically validates chunks of data
while downloading a file like BitTorrent. 

Here is a list of features.

* Command-line interface
* Download files through HTTP(S)/FTP/BitTorrent
* Segmented downloading
* Metalink version 3.0 support(HTTP/FTP/BitTorrent)
* HTTP/1.1 implementation
* HTTP Proxy support
* HTTP BASIC authentication support
* HTTP Proxy authentication support
* HTTP gzip, deflate content encoding support
* Chunked transfer encoding support
* Load Cookies from file using the Mozilla/Firefox(1.x/2.x) and Netscape format
* Custom HTTP Header support
* Persistent Connections support
* FTP through HTTP Proxy
* Download/Upload speed throttling
* BitTorrent extensions: Fast extension, DHT, PEX, MSE/PSE, Multi-Tracker
* Run as a daemon process.
* Selective download in multi-file torrent/Metalink
* Chunk checksum validation in Metalink
* Can disable segmented downloading in Metalink
* Netrc support
* Configuration file support
* Download URIs found in a text file or stdin
* Parameterized URI support

Dependency
----------

.External Library Dependency
[frame="all", grid="all"]
`--------------------`---------------------------
features              dependency
-------------------------------------------------
HTTPS                 GnuTLS or OpenSSL
BitTorrent            GnuTLS+Libgcrypt or OpenSSL
Metalink              libxml2 or Expat.
Checksum              GnuTLS+Libgcrypt or OpenSSL
gzip, deflate in HTTP zlib
-------------------------------------------------

Note;;
  GNU TLS has precedence over OpenSSL if both libraries are installed.
  If you prefer OpenSSL, run configure with "--without-gnutls".

Note;;
  libxml2 has precedence over Expat if both libraries are installed.
  If you prefer Expat, run configure with "--without-libxml2".

You can disable BitTorrent, Metalink support by providing --disable-bittorrent,
--disable-metalink respectively to configure script.

In order to enable async DNS support, you need c-ares or ares.

* c-ares: http://daniel.haxx.se/projects/c-ares/
* ares: ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/ATHENA/ares

How to build
------------
In order to build aria2 from the source package, you need following development
packages(package name may vary depending on the distribution you use):

* libgnutls-dev    (Required for HTTPS, BitTorrent, Checksum support)
* libgpg-error-dev (Required for BitTorrent, Checksum support)
* libgcrypt-dev    (Required for BitTorrent, Checksum support)
* libares-dev      (Required for async DNS support)
* libxml2-dev      (Required for Metalink support)
* libz1g-dev       (Required for gzip, deflate decoding support in HTTP)

You can use libssl-dev instead of libgnutls-dev,libgpg-error-dev,libgcrypt-dev:

* libssl-dev       (Required for HTTPS, BitTorrent, Checksum support)

You can use libexpat1-dev instead of libxml2-dev:

* libexpat1-dev    (Required for Metalink support)

The build process is fairly standard way for *nix programs:

-------------
$ ./configure
$ make
-------------

The executable is aria2c in src directory.

aria2 uses CppUnit for automated unit testing. To run run the unit test:

------------
$ make check
------------

BitTorrrent
-----------
About filename
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The filename of the downloaded file is determined as follows:

single-file mode::
    If "name" key is present in .torrent file, filename is the value of "name"
    key. Otherwise, filename is the basename of .torrent file appended by
    ".file". For example, .torrent file is "test.torrrent", then filename is
    "test.torrent.file".
    The directory to store the downloaded file can be specified by -d option.

multi-file mode::
    The complete directory/file structure mentioned in .torrent file is
    created.
    The directory to store the top directory of downloaded files can be
    specified by -d option.

In the default behavior, before download starts, complete directory structure
is created if needed. By default, aria2 opens at most 100 files mentioned in
.torrent file, directly writes to and reads from these files. The number of
files to open can be controlled by "--bt-max-open-files" option.

If "--direct-file-mapping" option set to be false, aria2 creates temporary
file in the store directory. The length of this file is the sum of length of
the files in .torrent file, so at least 2 times more disk space than the file
size itself is required. Writing and reading is done against this file.
After download completes, aria2 creates complete directory structure if needed,
and copies whole file or a part of it to the destination.

DHT
~~~
As of release 0.13.0, aria2 supports DHT. The routing table is saved to $HOME/.aria2/dht.dat.

Note;;
* -o option is used to change the filename of .torrent file itself, not a
  filename of a file in .torrent file.
* The port numbers that aria2 uses by default are 6881-6999 for TCP and UDP.
* aria2 doesn't configure port-forwarding automatically. Please configure your
  router or firewall manually.
* The maximum number of peers is 55. This limit may be exceeded when download
  rate is low.
* As of release 0.10.0, aria2 stops sending request message after selective
  download completes,

Metalink
--------
The current implementation supports HTTP/FTP/BitTorrent.
The other P2P protocols are ignored.

For checksum checking, MD5, SHA1, SHA256 are supported. If multiple hash
algorithms are provided, aria2 uses SHA1. If checksum checking is failed, aria2
doesn't retry the download and just exits with non-zero return code.

The supported user preferences are version, language, location, protocol and
os.

If chunk checksums are provided in Metalink file, aria2 automatically validate
a chunk of file while downloading it. This behavior can be turned off by
a command-line option.

If signature is included in a Metalink file, aria2 saves it as a file after the
download completed.
The filename is download filename + ".sig". If same file already exists, the
signature file is not saved.

netrc
-----
netrc support is enabled by default in ftp.
To disable netrc support, specify -n command-line option.
Your .netrc file should have correct permissions(600).

Configuration file
------------------
Configuration file must be placed under $HOME/.aria2 and must be named as
aria2.conf.
In each line, there is 1 parameter whose syntax is name=value pair,
where name is the long command-line option name without '--' prefix.
The lines beginning '#' are treated as comments.

Example:
--------------------------------------
# sample configuration file for aria2c
file-allocation=prealloc
listen-port=60000
seed-ratio=1.0
max-upload-limit=40K
ftp-pasv=true
---------------------------------------